Jurijev Blog

I am using JBoss jBPM BPEL for some weeks (for academic purposes) and I am quite satisfied with the results. But as no product is perfect neither is this.
For the upcoming release there is a defect submitted to JIRA saying that there is some kind of management console missing to jBPM BPEL.
So, I gave a little task to myself and design one management (read-only) console by myself.

First I added additional link to the left section on jBPM console saying “Process Logs”.

jBPM BPEL Console - ProcessLogs

After clicking to the picture you get the list of executed processes and the result they are in (from completed to ended …).

jBPM Console - Process Log

Then you can select one of the processes and see what is/was going on in the process.

jBPM Console - Process Run

I know it could be greatly improved but this is what suites my needs for now.
One of the great disadvantage of the jBPM BPEL is that it does not contain its own BPEL designer, so the output is more of the textual rather than graphical.

It has been a while since last post and obviously also some stuff has been done by the big players on the market.
Last week when I wanted to continue my work on ActiveBPEL open-source I realized that it was removed from download page. Version 2.1 (?). I say “No thanks !”.

So I downloaded JBoss AS and jBPM-BPEL and it works like a charm. Although it is not as shiny and glamorous as ActiveBPEL but it fulfills my major demands: it goes with a “flow” with releases, it covers all major standards and above all core engine is open-source.

General
For the purpose of my Ph.D. I am working much with XML format and frankly speaking working with XML in Oracle DB is very laborious to do. So I decided to start to use PostgreSQL DB which has quite some support for XML. But here new obstacle arises; namely ActiveBPEL does not support PostgreSQL “out-of-box”.

So, I went to Net and ask Google if any such theme exists. I came to the following link which was a good starting point for my work: ActiveBPEL patch for postgresql.
The problem with Luis solution is that is implemented in quite old versions of software.

So, I have started with latest (or at least more-latest ) configuration:

• Open Suse 9
• Jakarta Tomcat 5.0.28
• Eclipse 3.2.1 environment
• ActiveBPEL open-source engine 5.0-M1
• PostgreSQL 8.3
• PostgreSQL JDBC driver: postgresql-8.3-603.jdbc3.jar

What you should be able to do till now is:

• Create developlment environment with Eclipse 3.2.1
• Install Tomcat and ActiveBPEL engine with in-memory storage
• Install PostgreSQL DB

OK, so now we have basic platform to start working with.

DB creation

First we will create database that will hold our data.

• Create user in PostgreSQL database. We have created user named “activebpel”.
• Create the database itself:
  CREATE DATABASE "ActiveBPEL"
WITH OWNER = activebpel
ENCODING = 'UTF8';
GRANT ALL ON DATABASE "ActiveBPEL" TO public;
GRANT ALL ON DATABASE "ActiveBPEL" TO activebpel;
• Create tables/sequences/etc… from the file PostgreSQL_DB_ActiveBPEL

Modifying ActiveBPEL source code

Till now we have DB ready to be used. Now we have to change the source code in order to reflect our changes of database type:

• In the files README.txt, AeAbstractSqlStorage.java.txt, postgres-sql.xml.txt you can find the changed files that needs to be added to the projects in ActiveBPEL.
• After incorporating the changes into source code you should build the org.activebpel.rt.bpel.server project and copy the ae_rtbpelsvr.jar to the Tomcat installation jakarta-tomcat-5.0.28/shared/lib.

Configuring Tomcat

Now we should create database configuration for our new database. Below is the image of a configuration. Change the parameters according to your environment.

Configuring ActiveBPEL engine

Final step in our change is configuring ActiveBPEL engine to use PostgreSQL database storage. You should use the storage type of configuration file aeEngineConfig.xml file. You can take the one for Oracle persistence storage configuration. Below is the part of configuration that has to be changed in order to reflect our changes:

         <entry name="StorageProviderFactory">
            <entry name="Class" value="org.activebpel.rt.bpel.server.engine.storage.sql.AeSQLStorageProviderFactory"/>
            <entry name="DatabaseType" value="postgres"/>
            <entry name="Version" value="2.1.0.4"/>
            <entry name="DataSource">
               <entry name="Class" value="org.activebpel.rt.bpel.server.engine.storage.sql.AeJNDIDataSource"/>
               <entry name="JNDILocation" value="java:comp/env/jdbc/ActiveBPELDB"/>
               <entry name="Domain" value=""/>
            </entry>
            <entry name="CustomProviders">
               <entry name="AeB4PTaskStorageProvider">
                  <entry name="Class" value="org.activebpel.rt.b4p.server.storage.sql.AeSQLTaskStorageProvider"/>
               </entry>
            </entry>
         </entry>

Congratulations !
If everything went well till now you can now use ActiveBPEL open-source engine with PostgreSQL database.

On my previous port I sad that next task will be configuring Identity Manager.
Namely, I had quite some problems in configuring simple XML configuration (jazn) in Oracle 10g SOA Suite.

In ActiveBPEL server 5 the configuration of Identity Service is trivial. You can simply use the tomcat-users.xml file se the parameters in ActiveBPEL Administration Console and the task is done.
Actually, here is nothing more to say.

At the beginning of this year a new version of ActiveBPEL Engine Community Edition version 5 was available to download. Unfortunately I was not able to test it right away, but yesterday I did a test drive with new release.

I first installed the Sun’s JDK 1.5 and additional Tomcat version 5.0.28 as a prerequisites for installing ActiveBPEL engine.

The installation of ActiveBPEL engine in very easy (or at least it should be), however I stucked on the first step, that it running install.sh script.
Namely, after unpacking the the ActiveBPEL engine to a directory and starting installation with install.sh I get the following error:

"bad interpreter: No such file or directory"

Thanks to the batch52 the solution with removing CR/LFs from install.sh does the trick and I was able to continue with installation.

Another problem was that copying of ActiveBPEL jars (ae*.jar) was missing. In versions prior to 5 the copying of this libraries was done to the \shared\lib directory. In the latest version of ActiveBPEL engines script this step is missing.
After manually copying those libs to the Tomcat installation the engine started to work perfectly.

One of the best new stuff in the latest version are Human Tasks which I will check next.

One of the points worth mention here is that we are still waiting for the ActiveBPEL Designer 5 Community Edition which is still not yet available. The workaround might be using Active BPEL Designer 5 Professional with trial license, which I do.
Let’s hope that open – source edition of Active BPEL Designer 5 will be available before trial license expires.

Ta tema je namenjena opisu sodobnih tehnologij, ki jih uporabljam pri vsakdanjem delu.
Del objav je v angleščini del v slovenščini.

Včeraj se mi je zgodila prigoda s knjigo, ki niti ni tako redka. Ne bom objavil ne njenega imena in tudi ne založbe, ker to ni predmet te objave.

Torej v knjižnici sem si sposodil dotično knjigo in jo podaljševal do onemoglosti (beri: opomin pred tožbo + prepoved nadaljne izposoje v vseh knjižnicah) in nato sem se knjigo končno odločil vrniti. Vendar nastala je dilema, ker knjigo še vedno rabim.

Na poti k fotokopircu sem se spomnil, da so nas sedaj naučili evropskega obnašanja in spoštovanja avtorskih pravic. Zato sem se odločil , da pokličem založbo. Oni bodo pa menda imeli izvod knjige na zlogi. Na žalost nič. Knjiga je pošla pred nekaj meseci (leti ?) in nimajo namena narediti ponatis.

V redu si rečem pa knjigarne širom mesta. Tudi nič. Na koncu sem storil to kar sem se otepal od začetka. Skopiral knjigo in jo vrnil v knjižnico.

Sedaj se mi postavlja več vprašanj:
Ali so pri snovanju zakona o avtorskih pravicah … razmišljali o možnostih, da je mogoče samo en natis knjigo in jo potem iščeš kot ne vem kaj ?
Ali se založbe res požvižgajo na dejstvo, da sami nimajo na zalogi knjig, ki jih sami tiskajo ?
In nenazadnje ali avtorji ko gredo v objavo res prej ne preverijo in gredo k tisti založbi, ki bo poskrbela, da bo vsaj knjigarna imela kakšen izvod knjige ?